Paper 1 SL Sample 2.1 (poverty)

The text is about poverty and what a human living in poverty undergoes. It is directed to the rich people or people who are wealthier to tell them, show them what exactly poverty is like. It says poverty is "dirty, smelly with no proper underwear on and with the stench of my rotting teeth near you." It is a hard life as we understand through these lines. The author tells the audience, "Put yourself in my dirty, worn out, ill-fitting shoes and hear me." She tells the audience to listen to her, to think about her position in poverty. The purpose of this text is to make people aware of the people in poverty.

From line 5 onwards, the writer, Jo Goodwin Parker explains what kind of life a person leads when in poverty. It is living in dirty mattresses, as money has to be saved to buy diapers. It is living in a smell of urine, sour milk, spoiling food. The writer goes on to tell where these smells come from. It is because of the rotting garbage, refrigerator that is not working. The author then goes on explaining poverty and relating it to dirt. She says poverty is washing dishes with no soap as you need money to buy soap but money has to be saved for the baby's diapers. Next she thinks about poverty in terms of staying up all night, insects in food, all over the place, hoping that it never rains, as baby's diapers won't dry, seeing your children with runny noses forever. Because of all these, you ask help. She also explains that getting help is not easy as you have to tell the whole story over and over to many people and explaining the shame of poverty is never any easier at the next place. At last she tells the readers to look at other people like me with an angry heart, anger that will help you and help me.

The writer uses the text in the form of present tense. This focuses the audience on the current situation, gripping more attention. The whole text is in direct speech. For example: "You ask me what is poverty? Listen to me. Here I am, dirty, smelly and with no proper underwear on and with the stench of my rotting teeth near you." This line in the direct speech has more impact on the audience. It brings the audiences a clear image of poverty. This use of direct speech, resent tense directed right at the audience is powerful in this text.

The stylistic device of personification is used throughout the text. Poverty is personified as dirt, asking for help, hoping that it doesn't rain, staying up all night, cooling without food and cleaning without soap. Other devices like juxtaposition and simile are also used. Juxtaposition is used when she says, "poverty is dirt," and then tells "clean clothes coming from clean house." The connotation is literal. The writer tells us everything about the conditions of living in poverty, the outcomes of living in poverty. She does not represent the situation in a symbolic way.

This text creates a mood of sympathy toward the poor people living and creates a feeling of sympathy by telling the audience about the situation a person is in when asking for help. The writer shares his experience with creates this mood.

The text is well structured as he first tells what poverty is like and then moves on telling about its effects and outcomes. Therefore this text has a great impact on its audience and tells them to consider others in poverty like her.

 Paper 1 SL Sample 2.2 (poverty)

“You ask me what poverty is.” This opening line of the essay ‘What is poverty’ by Jo Goodwin Parker captures its spirit and purpose. Through her use of language she engages the reader directly with this abstract idea of poverty, making it very real and concrete. She wants the reader to understand poverty so that they feel motivated to do something about it.

Parker has written her essay for a wealthy audience, targeting ‘clean’, middle-class Americans, calling on them to recognize her struggle. She seems to know how the middle class think, as she puts words in their mouths and responds to them. For example, she writes, “You can say in your clean clothes coming from your clean house, ‘Anybody can be clean.’ Let me explain about housekeeping with no money.” Her purpose is to defend herself against these kinds of accusations. Furthermore she describes how humiliating it is to ask for money, by explaining to the reader, “Think about asking for a loan from a relative, if this is the only way you can imagine asking for help.” Interestingly, she puts herself in her reader’s shoes, asking them to do the same.

Parker’s message is very clear. She wants the reader to become angered by her poverty and eventually help her. She says she does not want the reader’s pity. “I cannot use your pity,” she says. Instead she asks the reader to “listen with understanding.” She wants to make the reader more aware of her despair and the despair of others around her. In the last lines she says, “Others like me are all around you. Look at us with an angry heart, anger that will help you help me.” After sketching an image of poverty throughout the essay she closes with this very clear call to action.

Parker achieves her purpose and conveys her message through a very direct tone, placing the audience in a very sombre, uncomfortable mood. As a reader, you feel lectured, because she uses imperative verbs, such as, “put yourself in my dirty, worn out, ill fitting shoes, and hear me.” Her use of the pronoun ‘you’ is two-fold. Firstly she uses the second person to speak directly to the reader, such as, “Have you ever had to ask for help?” Secondly, she uses the second person as a general subject, as in ‘one in general’. For example sketches a scenario, describing how one goes about asking for help. “You find out where the office is that you are supposed to visit. You circle that block four of five times.” Mixing the general ‘you’ with direct, second-person narration makes the reader feel very much a part of the story that she is telling, creating both a sense of empathy and frustration.

The author achieves her purpose further through her use of stylistic devices such as imagery. She constantly uses concrete images to portray the abstract idea of poverty. For example she explains that “poverty is staying up all night on cold nights to watch the fire, knowing one spark on the newspapers covering the walls means your sleeping child dies in flames.” This horrific image of a child burning to death, together with the newspaper-covered walls of a make-shift house add to the reader’s understanding of this abstract idea of poverty. There are many more nouns, such as diapers, runny noses and grits with no oleo that paint a picture of poverty in the reader’s mind. What’s more you can smell poverty through phrases that describe the “stench of rotting teeth,” “urine,” and “sour milk.” You can feel poverty through hands that are “so cracked and red,” because the author cannot afford Vaseline. The effect of this use of imagery on its audience is that you become more conscious of the effects of poverty.

Structurally speaking, the essay is written in a very persuasive way. There are parallel structures that start each body paragraph, such as “Poverty is getting up in the morning…” in paragraph 2, “Poverty is dirt” in paragraph 3, “Poverty is staying up all night” in paragraph 4, and “Poverty is asking for help” in paragraph 5. This use of repetition, or anaphora, reinforces Parker’s ideas. Furthermore she continually asks questions such as, “You ask me what poverty is?” which she answers throughout the essay with simple sentences such as, “I will tell you how it feels.” Finally she concludes that she has come out of her despair to tell us this. Again, we feel that we, as the readers have been spoken to.

To conclude, Jo Goodwin Parker’s essay is very effective in creating empathy for the poor. As she claims, it is not her goal to create pity but understanding. She achieves this through imagery, direct tone and other structural devices, such as anaphora. Their effect on the reader is that we care more about poverty.